the Vancouver Sun - Jan 03, 2007

Project sparks fear for bog

Perimeter Highway's impact on Burns Bog needs study, agency says

William Boei, Vancouver Sun

DELTA - The provincial government is not doing enough to protect
Burns Bog from the proposed South Fraser Perimeter Highway, Environment
Canada says.

"The overall impacts to sensitive ecological communities, particularly
those associated with Burns Bog, have not been adequately assessed,"
Environment Canada said in a submission to the province's Environmental
Assessment Office.

Environment Canada and other federal agencies, including Transport
Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, asked dozens of questions
seeking more information about the highway project, which is part of the
province's $3-billion Gateway program.

Most of the questions suggest the ministry of transportation has not
gathered enough information about the proposed highway's effects on the
unique bog, most of which is protected from development.

But the route does skirt around the northern and western edges of the
bog and in several stretches totalling 1.7 km, runs through transitional
lands whose water courses drain into the bog and which provide wildlife
habitat.

Environment Canada said it has many concerns about the highway's effects
on wildlife, including rare sandhill cranes, barn owls, shrews, voles,
frogs and other amphibians, bald eagles and other birds that breed or
winter in and around the bog.

But, the federal agency said, Gateway has not even done a thorough
review of existing literature on such impacts.

Environment Canada suggested the project could get around some potential
problems by building several elevated highway sections near the bog and
providing 100-metre-wide "vegetated corridors" between the bog and the
Fraser River.

The Greater Vancouver Regional District and Delta's municipal government
were also critical of the highway proposal. Those agencies said part of
the highway route could be shifted further west to protect the
transition lands on the western edge of the bog.

Senior Gateway Program officials were on vacation and could not be
reached Tuesday.

But an EAO official noted that the submissions, filed during a public
comment period that ended in mid-December, are not the last word on the
environmental assessment.

"The next step will be to go through the comments in detail and start to
identify the issues from those comments," said Paul Finkel, project
assessment manager for the EAO.

The ministry of transportation will be asked to respond on the issues;
its initial response is expected in mid-January.

Finkel said an intergovernmental working group will also start meeting
to discuss issues raised and ask the ministry for more information.

Environmental groups were highly critical of the project.

"Compromising the flow of water [in the transition lands] will affect
this marvel of nature and have serious detrimental repercussions on the
many ecosystems that rely on Burns Bog," said Rick Le Noury of Delta
Residents for a Healthy Community. "Research into the point of no return
for Burns Bog is needed before the work is done. To do otherwise is to
sound the death knell for both Burns Bog and the Fraser River delta
wetlands."

Donna Passmore of the Fraser Valley Conservation Coalition said she was
especially concerned about sandhill cranes.

"Given the dramatically small number [less than 20 birds] and their
known hypersensitivity to nesting disturbances and pollution, the impact
on these birds' Burns Bog home is of particular concern," Passmore said.